[Q] Were the KOR years a time of relief for you, did you feel that something was changing in your reality?

I never have any relief, my life is always hard.

[Q] It was a long time, Poland was different then.

I can't say, I didn't have any relief in KOR, and today as well - if someone is 10 minutes late, I start thinking that something has happened, so I'm always imagining that something has happened, so I never have any relief.

[Q] And the Solidarność years, you were a delegate at the Solidarność conference, you were very involved with Solidarność.

Yes, but in KOR, too. When they wanted me to go and do this or that, a hunger strike here, something else there, write something, bring something, I didn't say that KOR is no good, I said it was very good. I believe that what KOR did, that's what created Poland the way it is today not the Church, the Church rose up because the spirit of KOR was in Gdańsk and not because Fr Jankowski celebrated a Mass. That's just stupid. The fact that Ewa Milewicz was driving over by car to print those KOR leaflets with Biliński, that's what mattered. And that's what it begins with and if one or another behaved differently that's a different matter, but it wasn't Fr Jankowski who brought about the strike. The trade unions, too, what were they called, free trade unions, that's KOR, too, whether it's Jacek or Karol or Adam or Halina Mikołajska or Lipiński or Aniela or Joanna Szczęsna or Lityński or Anna Dodziuk, those are the people who did it, those are the ones who gave Poland the idea, when did the Church give you that kind of Poland? The Church was always a hierarchical institution which hates freedom and throws its weight about.

Marek Edelman (1919-2009) was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and a noted cardiologist. He was the last surviving leader of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Following the Second World War, he took an active part in domestic and international politics, dedicating himself to fighting for justice and peace.

Joanna Klara Agnieszka 'Aga' Zuchowska was born 20 January 1938. Her father was killed in the Katyń massacre. After the war, she moved from Warsaw to Lódz. She obtained a degree in medicine in 1960, qualifying as a specialist in internal medicine in 1973. Dr Zuchowska worked with Marek Edelman for 15 years. In 1982 she left Poland for Algeria where she remained for the next three years, returning to Poland in 1985. She currently lives in Lódz.

Anka Grupinska studied English at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She wrote for Poznan’s underground publications and was herself one of the founding publishers of the bi-monthly Czas Kultury. She spent 1988 and 1989 in Israel compiling reminiscences of Holocaust survivors. From 1991 to 1993, she held the post of Cultural Attache at the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv. She moved back to Poland in 1996 and now writes books on Jewish subjects, mainly dealing with the history of the Warsaw ghetto. She is also a freelance journalist for Tygodnik Powszechny. Anka Grupinska is the director of the Centropa Foundation project in Poland (oral history project) called “The Witness of the Jewish Century¿, presents her own radio programme, “Of Jews and of Poles too¿, and teaches creative writing and oral history in Collegium Civitas and SWPS in Warsaw.

Joanna Szczesna is a journalist writing for Gazeta Wyborcza. Together with Anna Bikont, she’s the author of Pamiatkowe rupiecie, przyjaciele i sny Wislawy Szymborskiej (The Recollected Flotsam, Friends and Dreams of Wislawa Szymborska) a biography of Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish winner of the Noble Prize for Literature. Since the 1970s, Joanna Szczesna has been involved with the democratic opposition movement in Poland, active in the Worker’s Defence Committee (KOR), the co-founder of the independent press in Poland: editor of KOR’s Information Bulletin, Solidarnosc Press Agency and Tygodnik Mazowsze.